IGNACE – A “willingness process” event on Thursday morning was “well attended and well received,” a public relations consultant contracted by the Township of Ignace says.
About 50 people showed up for the Mayor’s Community Breakfast at the town’s arena, Jake Pastore said Friday.
For an event on a “cold winter morning” (the temperature was below minus-10 Celsius), the turnout can be considered “extremely successful,” he said.
Interim mayor Kim Baigrie was there, as were members of the “willingness engagement team” organized by With Chéla Inc., the firm hired by the township to study community support for Ignace becoming a host community for an eventual deep geological repository for nuclear waste.
The Ignace and Wabigoon Lake area is one of two finalists being considered by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) for hosting a deep geological repository similar to a nearly completed facility in Finland that 10 Ignace residents visited earlier this month in a trip funded by the NWMO. The South Bruce area in southern Ontario is the other finalist. A siting decision is slated for next year.
The NWMO, which is funded by nuclear power producers, is also paying for Ignace’s “willingness process” of deciding whether it wants to be a host community.
“Your Choice, Your Voice” billboards have been put up along the Trans-Canada Highway at both ends of town to publicize the willingness study and the engagement team’s website, yourchoiceignace.ca.
Meanwhile, DGR opponents We the Nuclear Free North issued a reaction to provincial Energy Minister Todd Smith’s response to the “Proximity Principle” petition presented to the legislature in late May by MPPs Lise Vaugeois (NDP-Thunder Bay–Superior North), Sol Mamakwa (NDP-Kiiwetinoong) and Mike Schreiner (Green-Guelph).
The petition called on the government to adopt the principle that spent nuclear fuel should be disposed of near the power plants that create the waste. Smith’s letter rejected the idea and declared support for “the NWMO’s ongoing work to select an informed and willing community for a [deep geological repository].”
We the Nuclear Free North’s Charles Faust said Smith’s response came as no surprise, as Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government is “clearly not” interested in what opponents of the DGR project have to say.
Smith is “taking his cues from the nuclear industry,” Faust said. “And the nuclear industry wants only one thing, and that's to bury the stuff in the ground and walk away.”
